Zooey Deschanel is the not so New Girl

Zooey Deschanel is many things — a singer, actress, songwriter, unwitting archetype for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl aesthetic — but, if you ask her, a comedienne isn’t one of them.

“I sort of consider myself a comedic actress, not a comedienne,” she explained during a recent interview. “I think it’s different.”

It’s a small distinction but one that’s important for Deschanel as she enters her second season as the star of last year’s surprise breakout comedy, New Girl — in which she plays the titular character, Jess Day.

When New Girl premiered last September, Jess was a heavy handed “quirky” character, prone to using awkward and embarrassing humour instead of dealing with her often awkward and embarrassing reality. The series’ comedic crux lie in the hammy Jess moving in with three emotionally stunted male best friends. While initially entertaining, it became obvious to both cast and audience that the premise would need to evolve. And, as the show’s second season prepares to bow this Tuesday, Jess is now a more toned-down, accurate representation of a real woman living in a modern world — but still quirky.

“At the beginning of last year, I always said, ‘She’s not going to always be in the same heightened state that she is in the pilot because in that situation she’s just gone through a crisis,'” Deschanel explains.

“Now, if it were a movie, you might just see her in a slice of her life. But, it’s a TV show so they stretch it out. You see somebody in a lot of different situations and she gets confident and grows up and a lot of things over the season.

“I always thought of the show as we were aiming for reality. Now, we have silly situations that sometimes throw our life into some broader stuff. But, ultimately, I’m always grounding it in reality.”

For the 32-year-old actress, that meant mining her own relationships with her male best friends.

“I never had funny roommates, really,” she says. However, “I’ve always had a lot of guy friends, so I love the camaraderie between Jess and the guys. I have a lot of girlfriends, too, but I think it’s important to have guy friends because it sort of provides a different perspective. I really like that relationship.”

Deschanel says she also engaged in rigorous self-evaluation in order to perfect her character.

“I’m watching every week and seeing what’s working,” she reveals. “I’m using my own sensibilities to inform how I play the character. So, if I think something seems like too much, the next time we do something like that I’m going to pull it back a little bit, you know?

“Sometimes on the day you don’t always know how to play something, but the fact that we’ve done however many episodes and I’ve been looking at them and seeing what works, that’s going to inform how I play it,” she continues. “I have a sort of shorthand for my character and I know what’s working and what’s not working. I think that one of the privileges of doing television is the ability to evaluate my own performance and try to improve.”

As the series gained traction, two separate but equally engaging plot lines emerged. While the character of Schmidt (Max Greenfield) — Jess’s formerly overweight, self-obsessed faux-womanizer roommate — rose to cult comedic status and began sharing top billing with his female co-star, the underlying Ross and Rachel-like romance between Jess and her underachieving roommate Nick (Jake Johnson) had fans hoping the couple would, at the very least, drunkenly hook up.

“There’s no danger of that happening,” the recently divorced actress deadpans when the possibility of a Jess-Nick relationship is brought up. “They’re not getting together any time soon.”

“I think that they’re not ready for each other and nobody is going to push them together,” she continues. “I think it’s nice, the sort of love-hate-but-love relationship they have. They [the writers] are not going to throw them together or anything soon.”

Though she quickly adds that “they might tease it out.”

So, while Nick and Jess may not hook up, late last season a lonely Jess did make a play at Schmidt, if only because he was available. Which brings up the question, will a second season mean another convenient intra-apartment slip-up?

“I don’t think so,” Deschanel demurs. “I’m going to say no.”

But, she assures, as long as audiences are willing, the show’s unique brand of awkward situational comedy will continue to evolve. After all, she says, “Playing into comedic situations is sort of where, I think, my strength lies.”